When I picture the Civil War, I picture people fighting in a field and Abraham Lincoln delivering triumphant speeches of freedom and emancipation. Not often do I think about the desperate human struggle for survival in POW camps, the brutal journey many took to escape slavery, or the hundreds of dead bodies that lay mutilated after brutal battles. In the graphic history Battle Lines, by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm and Ari Kelman, such realities and human experiences are visually portrayed. In order to tell these stories, the authors ground each chapter with an object and a story. By centering each chapter around an object, the authors place a great importance on each item and draw a connection between the experience of the individual and the experience
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In this chapter, a union soldier is captured and sent to andersonville. Here, he documents his experience and the brutal conditions soldiers experienced such as extreme starvation. While at first his writings depict a sense of hopefulness, he soon begins to lose hope as he struggles to survive the brutal conditions. Finally, he succumbs to the torture and dies. However, after his death an illiterate soldier finds his journal and begins to document his time in the camp (Fetter-Vorm, Kelman 2015, 164-174). The pen is used to elicit a feeling of sympathy from the audience– as we see him writing about the horrors it becomes hard to imagine experiencing them. Likewise, the illiterate man’s account established how the pain of the war and the need to document its brutality transcends socio-economic class or education level; everyone was dying a gruesome, horrendous death. Furthermore, it represents the cycle of suffering experienced, even as one person died and stopped writing another person was behind them to continue writing and continue suffering. This object, while simple in design, is important because it lets people document the Civil War and tell their stories. The act of recounting the war is important to the overall narrative of the Civil War as much of the history and knowledge known today comes from written accounts of those who experienced it. Overall, the use of the pen in this chapter is important as it connects the audience to the brutality experienced during the war and demonstrates the importance of written
In this chapter, a union soldier is captured and sent to andersonville. Here, he documents his experience and the brutal conditions soldiers experienced such as extreme starvation. While at first his writings depict a sense of hopefulness, he soon begins to lose hope as he struggles to survive the brutal conditions. Finally, he succumbs to the torture and dies. However, after his death an illiterate soldier finds his journal and begins to document his time in the camp (Fetter-Vorm, Kelman 2015, 164-174). The pen is used to elicit a feeling of sympathy from the audience– as we see him writing about the horrors it becomes hard to imagine experiencing them. Likewise, the illiterate man’s account established how the pain of the war and the need to document its brutality transcends socio-economic class or education level; everyone was dying a gruesome, horrendous death. Furthermore, it represents the cycle of suffering experienced, even as one person died and stopped writing another person was behind them to continue writing and continue suffering. This object, while simple in design, is important because it lets people document the Civil War and tell their stories. The act of recounting the war is important to the overall narrative of the Civil War as much of the history and knowledge known today comes from written accounts of those who experienced it. Overall, the use of the pen in this chapter is important as it connects the audience to the brutality experienced during the war and demonstrates the importance of written